The nightly boosterism on the local television news in this erstwhile “mistake by the lake” smacked of hayseed provincialism. The polka-loving former mayor and current governor, George V. Voinovich, was about as inescapable as the flu in February. And it was difficult not to cringe as the locals kept repeating the lie that their city “invented” rock ‘n’ roll.
But, let’s hand it to these guys: They wanted the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame more than anybody else a decade ago, and now–$92 million later–they’ve got it. Both the building itself and the exhibitions it houses are flawed but fascinating. Even if one suspects that putting rock in a museum is tantamount to killing it, there’s enough detail built into the exhibits to amuse and delight the most hardened fan of the music.
For example, there’s the jukebox that purports to hold the 500 songs that shaped rock ‘n’ roll, among them two songs by the Monkees–the Monkees!!!–and only three by Van Morrison. It doesn’t contain the Velvet Underground’s “Sweet Jane” but does save a slot for Duran Duran’s “Hungry Like the Wolf,” and Culture Club (“Time (Clock of the Heart)”) rates as many mentions as Paul Simon (“Graceland”). Yet there are some wonderfully offbeat inclusions: Husker Du’s “Turn on the News” and the New York Dolls’ “Personality Crisis,” for example, which weren’t hits but which are great songs.
It’s a well-conceived exhibit because the visitor wants to argue with it, savor it, even fantasize about improving on it.
Other impressions of the hall and the Hall of Fame concert, and a smattering of quotes from the various luminaries and low-lights passing through town on opening weekend:
– Among the wittier exhibits is one devoted to the music’s detractors. Tipper Gore is memorialized with a billboard-size quote from the congressional hearings she engineered in 1985: “I’m a fairly with-it person, but this stuff is curling my hair.”
– Little Richard: “I am the originator . . . the architect of rock ‘n’ roll.”
– Disc jockey Alan Freed, who, while broadcasting out of Cleveland in 1951, made the term “rock ‘n’ roll” a part of white youth-culture slang, is the personality most invoked by city boosters when they talk about Cleveland as the home of rock ‘n’ roll. It’s a silly debate, and what’s more, it’s obvious that Memphis, New Orleans and Chicago have a greater stake in the music’s origins. But the myth of Freed was continually exaggerated by the Cleveland media throughout the weeklong festivities. The hall itself takes a more sobering view: It credits Freed with popularizing, not coining, the term “rock ‘n’ roll,” which had been a part of African-American slang for decades, and it dispassionately notes that he pleaded guilty to commercial bribery in 1962, one of the biggest fish to fall in the payola scandal that tainted commercial radio. Freed was given a six-month suspended sentence and fined, and died three years later, a broken alcoholic.
– The Hall of Fame opening was ushered in with a parade that was about as irreverent as one of those Fourth of July walks down Main Street in the Bible Belt. But it was great to hear Jimi Hendrix’s bombs-bursting-in-air version of “The Star Spangled Banner” blasting through a stack of speakers before the ribbon-cutting. Appropriately, a couple of Marine jets warming up for an air show buzzed the ceremony.
– How bad were those ribbon-cutting speeches? The windbags at the podium twice invoked Huey Lewis’ “The Heart of Rock ‘n’ Roll” (it’s still “beatin’ in Cleveland,” don’tcha know?) and not once mentioned Ian Hunter’s classic “Cleveland Rocks.”
– Yoko Ono on turning over John Lennon’s memorabilia to the hall: “You have to love the fact that he is here and no longer in my closet.”
– Mingling at the black-tie dinner the night before the Hall of Fame concert were the Pretenders’ Martin Chambers, Nils Lofgren, Dion, Robbie Robertson, Steve Cropper and other second-tier stars, and slinking in fashionably late, none other than the yin and yang of Chicago nightcrawling, Nash Kato and Jim Ellison. With all that talent in the audience, and something like three dozen bands in town for the big show, the best entertainment the organizers could come up with for the $1,000-a-plate dinner was the Rock Bottom Remainders, in which authors Stephen King and Dave Barry led a motley collection of rock critics and ringers through horrendous versions of “Double Shot of My Baby’s Love” and “Louie Louie.” Fraud, I say.
– Former Supremes vocalist Mary Wilson: “Motown became bigger than the groups and I resent it.” The Supremes “were just three little black girls from the projects at a time when black people weren’t even citizens” but the group “changed how the world viewed black women.”
– Legendary Sun Studios producer Sam Phillips has surely mellowed in recent years. His thoughts on Pat Boone and other mainstream performers doing watered-down versions of early rock ‘n’ roll hits like Little Richard’s “Tutti Frutti”: “It didn’t offend me. If anything, it broadened the base for the music. Pat Boone paid a high compliment to Little Richard.”
– Drummer Max Weinberg on future collaborations between Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band: “We take it song by song. There are no plans to do anything further than we are now.”
– Weinberg on backing Chuck Berry for “Johnny B. Goode”: “We haven’t rehearsed with Chuck. If you have to rehearse `Johnny B. Goode,’ then you probably shouldn’t be up there playing. With Chuck, you have to know only two things: When the foot goes down, you play; when the foot goes up, you stop.”
– The Hall of Fame concert made one thing readily apparent: John Fogerty should record an album with Booker T and the MG’s, who backed him on “Born on the Bayou” and “Fortunate Son.” The brief, scintillating set made it clear how much Fogerty’s Creedence Clearwater Revival owed to the MG’s spare, smoldering groove. Despite being virtually silent for the last eight years, Fogerty demonstrated that his voice and passion are still very much intact, and it was his performance that was the single most memorable moment in the seven-hour snoozathon.
– Lou Reed dedicated his performance of “Sweet Jane” to his old Velvet Underground sidekick, Sterling Morrison, who died last week of lymphoma at age 53. Morrison, one of the great unsung guitarists in rock history, had virtually dropped out of the business until recent years, when he recorded with Luna and Velvets drummer Moe Tucker. A great intellect with a withering sense of humor, Morrison was working on a book about his experiences in the ’60s when he died.
